Jack @ ASP.NET

A set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity. In this second major release of the Power Tools we have added the following four extensions:
Tools Options Support
The number one feature request by far has been the ability to turn off the individual extensions in the Productivity Power Tools.  In this release, we’ve added an extension which adds a category to Tools Options which allows you to toggle the extensions on/off and provides a single place to find the options for a particular extension.

Auto Brace Completion
Automatic Brace Completion improves the productivity of writing code by automatically inserting the closing code construct when the opening construct is typed for VB & C#.  More specifically, this extension:

• Supports the following constructs: (), {}, [], <>, “”, and ‘’. 
• Allows you to press <TAB> to navigate past the next enclosing brace
• Allows you to automatically complete a statement in C# by inserting the closing semi-colon and moving you to the next line with SHIFT + ENTER

Triple Click

It’s never been easier to select a line of code from the mouse by simple triple-clicking anywhere on the line. 

Fix Mixed Tabs
Some developers prefer tabs, others prefer spaces, and nobody likes mixing tabs & spaces.  This extension promotes developer harmony by warning as they are open or save a file that has a mixture of tabs & spaces.  The information bar also provides an easy way to fix the file to suit your preference. 

Ctrl + Click Go To Definition
This extension gives the editor a web browser by adding clickable hyperlinks to symbols in your code as you hold down the Ctrl key.

Move Line Up/Down Commands
This extension maps the Alt+Up Arrow & Alt+Down Arrow keys such that they will move the current line of code or the selected lines up and down through the editor. 

Column Guides
Since Visual Studio 2002, there has been a not so secret registry key which allowed user to draw a vertical line in the code editor.  This is very useful to remind developers that their full line of code or comments may not fit one a single screen. Thanks to this extension this feature has returned with UI configure it.  Simply place the cursor at the appropriate column and select Add Guideline from the context menu ?

Colorized Parameter Help
This extension improves consistency with the editor by applying syntax highlighting to the contents of the Parameter Help window for C# &VB.
Please note: Syntax highlighting colors can be customized using the display items prefixed with “Signature Help” in the “Fonts and Colors” menu.

A set of extensions to Visual Studio Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity.

• Searchable Add Reference Dialog
  The new Add Reference dialog makes it faster and easier for you to find the reference that you are looking for and add it to your VB, C# or F# project.  From the Solution Explorer, simply right click on the References node, select the Add Reference command to see the updated Add Reference Dialog. 
• Highlight Current Line
  As the resolution of monitors increases, it’s becoming more difficult to find the caret in the code editor.  The highlight current line extension makes it easy to find the caret by highlighting the line that the caret is on in the editor.  You can even configure the default colour by changing the setting for “Current Line (Extension)” and “Current Line Inactive (Extension)” in Tools Options Fonts & Colors. 
• HTML Copy
  This extension provides support for the HTML Clipboard format when copying code from the editor.  This means that you’ll no longer have to go fix up the formatting of your code when you paste it into a TFS bug form or any other HTML based control. 
• Triple Click
  It’s never been easier to select a line of code from the mouse by simple triple-clicking anywhere on the line. 
• Fix Mixed Tabs
  Some developers prefer tabs, others prefer spaces, and nobody likes mixing tabs & spaces.  This extension promotes developer harmony by warning as they are open or save a file that has a mixture of tabs & spaces.  The information bar also provides an easy way to fix the file to suit your preference. 
• Ctrl + Click Go To Definition
  This extension gives the editor a web browser by adding clickable hyperlinks to symbols in your code as you hold down the Ctrl key.
• Colorized Parameter Help
  This extension improves consistency with the editor by applying syntax highlighting to the contents of the Parameter Help window for C# &VB. 
• Move Line Up/Down Commands
  This extension maps the Alt+Up Arrow & Alt+Down Arrow keys such that they will move the current line of code or the selected lines up and down through the editor. 
• Column Guides
  Since Visual Studio 2002, there has been a not so secret registry key which allowed user to draw a vertical line in the code editor.  This is very useful to remind developers that their full line of code or comments may not fit one a single screen. Thanks to this extension this feature has returned with UI configure it.  Simply place the cursor at the appropriate column and select Add Guideline from the context menu

Box selection is a feature that has been in Visual Studio for awhile (although not many people knew about it).  It allows you to select a rectangular region of text within the code editor by holding down the Alt key while selecting the text region with the mouse.  With VS 2008 you could then copy or delete the selected text.

On machines with a 64-bit OS, uninstall of Office 2007 will break the VS 2008 web designer.  You will find that the VS designer won’t be able to load, and any attempts to switch to Design View will hang the product.  Note that 32-bit machines are not affected and neither are other VS releases.

The root cause of this problem is that Office 2007 and the VS 2008 web designer both share a component, 32-bit MSXML5.  When Office 2007 uninstalls or gets upgraded, MSXML5 is removed yet Visual Studio still needs it.

If you are affected by this issue, there are workarounds where you may not have to completely reinstall Visual Studio.  However, the steps are different depending on how Office 2007 got removed (uninstall vs. upgrade to Office 2010) and also if you have VWD Express or a full product.

Workaround if you manually uninstalled Office 2007 (i.e. Add/Remove Programs) AND have a non-Express version of VS 2008:

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs
2. Uninstall “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component“
3. Reinstall “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component” -
• You will need the VS install media: the product DVD or mount an ISO image
• Go to WCU\WebDesignerCore folder and run WebDesignerCore.exe.
• Setup does not have UI, so please simply wait about 5 minutes or watch msiexec activity in the Task Manager.
• Verify that Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component reappears in Add/Remove Programs.
• WebDesignerCore.exe installs RTM version.
4. If your VS 2008 has been updated to SP1, you have to reinstall SP1 to update the Web Authoring Component you installed in Step 3.

Workaround if you manually uninstalled Office 2007 (i.e. Add/Remove Programs) AND have Visual Web Developer Express 2008:

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs  
2. Uninstall “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Authoring Component“
3. Reinstall Visual Web Developer Express 2008/SP1
   (SP1 for Express is not a separate install thus the need to reinstall the entire product)

ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 are now available. ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 include lots of new features and improvements that enable you to easily build, deploy and manage great Web sites and applications.

Everything You Need to Build Better Websites

Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 makes it easier to edit, search, and navigate code. Improved VB and C# Intellisense makes it even easier to find and use classes within the .NET Framework. Improved JavaScript IntelliSense enables better AJAX development. New code navigation and visualization features enable you to quickly find and navigate large projects and visualize dependencies across your code-base. Improved unit testing, debugging and profiling help support building robust applications.

ASP.NET Web Forms
With ASP.NET 4, Web Forms controls now render clean, semantically correct, and CSS friendly HTML markup. Built-in URL routing functionality allows you to expose clean, search engine friendly, URLs and increase the traffic to your Website. ViewState within applications is smaller and can now be more easily controlled. And more controls, including rich charting and data controls, are now built-into ASP.NET 4 and enable you to build applications even faster.

ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET MVC 2 is now built-into VS 2010 and ASP.NET 4, and provides a great way to build web sites and applications using a model-view-controller based pattern. ASP.NET MVC 2 adds features to easily enable client and server validation logic, provides new strongly-typed HTML and UI-scaffolding helper methods, enables more modular/reusable applications, and facilitates a clean unit testing and TDD workflow with Visual Studio 2010.

Web Deployment
Visual Studio 2010 makes deploying your Websites easy. You can now publish your Websites and applications to a staging or production server from within Visual Studio itself. Visual Studio 2010 makes it easy to transfer all your files, code, configuration, database schema and data in one complete package. VS 2010 also makes it easy to manage separate web.config configuration files settings depending upon whether you are in debug, release, staging or production modes.

Before (VS 2008)

After (VS 2010)

The majority of feedback around this change was positive, but, as with most UI changes, there has been a vocal group that preferred the older placement.  When asked what they liked about the old placement, 99% of the time the response was, “I liked the ability to quickly close tabs by repeatedly clicking on the ‘X’ without moving my mouse.” 

I’ll admit it: I used that feature quite a bit to quickly close tabs.  That is, until I found out that there are better and more efficient ways to clean up the Tab Well.  Once I discovered these, I never looked back.  So, for this “Tips and Tricks” article, I wanted to share some of those ways to quickly close documents. 

#1: Window->Close All Documents

Under the Window menu is a handy command: Close All Documents.  Clicking this will prompt you to save your work and will then close all documents that are currently open.  Yes, this does affect more than just the documents in the Tab Well – floating documents are also closed.  If you don’t want to take your hands off the keyboard, simply press Alt+ W, L, to invoke the command (You can also assign it a keyboard shortcut under Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard).

 #2: Ctrl+F4

Another handy shortcut is Ctrl+F4 which, on most machines, is bound to the command Window.CloseDocumentWindow.  Pressing this keyboard combination will close the current document window that has focus.  Therefore, if you want to quickly get rid of a number of items in your tab well, just keep pressing Ctrl+F4 and eventually they’ll be gone. 

#3: Right-Click->Close All But This

If you want to close all but one open file, simply right-click on the tab and select Close All But This.  This will close all open documents (floating included) except the tab you’ve right-clicked on. 

#4: Middle Click

For those that prefer to use the mouse instead of the keyboard, there’s still a quick way to close tabs: the middle click.  This shortcut actually works in a number of other applicatios as well.  Simply place your mouse on the tab well and middle click to close the tab.  You can keep your mouse in the first spot and click away.